I am not really entirely sure what to write about Lana Del Rey, it is always strange when a pop singer can be so divisive because… it’s pop music, by it’s very nature it’s meant for mass consumption, divisive is the opposite of it’s intent  I think people felt a little burned by her or rather, felt exposed by her.  Music is, in many ways for many people as much a piece of self identity as it is art.  Who and what you listen to can be as much of a fashion statement as the clothes you wear and if you identify as someone who is non conventional I can see how Lana Del Rey could burn you.  When Pitchfork first “discovered” her on youtube she became pretty instantly popular with the underground crowd.  Of course, it didn’t take long for the history of Lizzy Grant to emerge and suddenly there were people writing about her being prepackaged or her being fake or her having fake lips or whatever.  It certainly made her poison to those who first liked her but it seems silly to me, if you think Video Games is a good song then you think Video Games is a good song.  I grew up listening to punk music and when Avril Lavigne first broke I worked at a record store.  You’re supposed to kind of hate everything she stands for in that situation.  Thing is though, it doesn’t matter if you dislike her or her manufactured image, it doesn’t effect the music and I still think the chorus to Complicated is a pretty masterful bit of pop song craft.  As such, I also think that Video Games is pretty good, the most troubling part about it is not it’s origin but the screwed up gender politics of the relationship it describes.  This all brings us back to Lana, who I run pretty hot and cold on.  When she first appeared I was definitely very into how she looked, she just had a certain… something.  And yes, it always seemed calculated, no one accidentally rolls out of bed and looks like that.  I am fine with that.  I just got bored with her.  By the time her album finally came out I was way past bored with the controversy and her and the album itself was kind of mediocre.  So I don’t think of her much but you know, sometimes I pause and realize that yeah, she’s pretty hot. Sometimes there is just something to that look that catches my eye.  Thing is, that’s fine.  I can like Video Games.  I can kind of like Blue Jeans.  I can think Born to Die isn’t very good.  It isn’t a statement about me at my core, it’s a statement about three songs.  I can like how she looks some days and not, the only thing it says about me is that I am rather flighty in my attraction to people I don’t actually know.  My choice of her only really reveals one thing about me and that’s that today I want to fuck Lana Del Rey.